Let's not exaggerate now.... though picking up Shantae was very obviously a wasted effort for the company.
AHHHH! It burns!! IT BURNS!!! 
Although their lack of interest in Shantae Advance does reveal a lot about their lack of commitment to publishing
quality software.
But HSF2X is a new release.
Okay, I'll elaborate on HSF2X.
I used to be a real hard core SF nerd. It's all I ever played. Nearly all of my allowance and other income went towards playing SF2 in the arcade. I bought an SNES to practice for the arcade challengers. I would handicap myself when playing against friends by disabling all attack buttons but fierce punch (
although I have no doubt there was someone even more hard core out there that used just Jab). I beat one of my friends using my prehensile monkey feet once. I bought every SNES SF2 release, I bought SF2 for the GB, I bought numerous SF games for the Saturn, Playstation, and Dreamcast. My friends used to make fun of me for playing SF2 and buying every version Capcom released.
I had Street Fighter on the fucking brain. Although I admit to never have given a shit about the "story" of why these people were punching each other in the face, that's perhaps a more frightening subset of SF fandom, than say playing SF with your feet.
Today. . . I just don't fucking care about playing SF2 Ryu against Super Turbo Ryu, on a Hyper Fight background. I just don't give a damn.
It's just a testament to how completely dependent on milking franchises Capcom is. It must be great to have a large enough body of work, that you can just reach back a few years and plagiarize your own content instead of coming up with something fresh.
I'm sure it's neat, I'm sure it's great, but being able to pick any character from any incarnation of SF2 and pitting them against each other is not going to prolong my enjoyment of the series, or coerce my friends into playing more of a game we played the hell out of ten years ago.
I'd love to play more SF3, but seeing as how arcades are all but dead, and not even the local Dave & Busters has a lone SF3 cabinet, I am not inclined to practice on a home version to improve arcade skills that will be all for naught.
The thrill of playing SF is to play against people, and that's why Capcom should focus on releasing these damned games with on-line play.
I'm so into on-line gaming now, seeing as how it's more or less replaced the awesome arcade scene of the late 80's early 90's, that I'd be willing to buy individual releases of SF2 with on-line play at $40 a pop instead of a compilation title. I'd go that far, just for on-line play.
I'm just not going to go so far as to buy an Xbox.
I cannot afford it. The way the economy is currently, and the miniscule income I have goes towards keeping a roof over my head, living provisions, and feeding my gaming addiction. Lord help me, gaming has trumped my love for even comics. When times got tight, the recreational purposes became fewer and fewer, and now it's just soba for dinner and a new PS2 game, from the gobs of awesome titles flooding the market, when I can afford one.
Ignoring my financial straights, it's just confounding that Capcom would be so foolish as to ignore the enormous popularity of SF in Japan, and the ridiculously large userbase of the PS2 to capitalize on the former craze.
There's no way in hell this cannot be as profitable for Capcom in Japan as releasing the game for Xbox Live. I'm not really counting on Street Fighter setting XBL ablaze here either. As nice as it will be, the hordes of SF have diminished, and I just know the more eye pleasing and accessible DOA on-line is going to draw more attention to itself. Then there's Street Fighter's old rival Mortal Kombat to contend with as well. . .
Capcom isn't alone in their on-line quandary. From Software has also, seemingly, experimented with on-line play in Armored Core in Japan, only to ultimately drop it altogether.
It's like every time they take a baby step towards improving the appeal of their software, then drop it and take five hundred paces backward.
WTF?!?!!?!?@!
I want to kick the Japanese developer community in their teeth for this crap. >:|
I was thinking more along the lines of Herman promising no more censorship (then we got KOF2001/2002 PS2)
Wait a minute, I was under the impression Agetec published the KoF Collection here? @_@
The next time a SF game is even being released is somewhere in 2007 or 2008, if Capcom sticks to being idiots.
There's a
HUGE opportunity for Capcom to reinvigorate, dare I say "revolutionize", 3D fighters with Street Fighter.
Capcom could cash-in in a big way by creating a fully 3D Street Fighter game that retains the fantastical elements of classic SF game play, and totally eclipses the stable of samey same Virtua Fighter clones that are hogging the 3D fighter market.
Look at the artistic / expressionist methods the development community is achieving with the current generation of consoles. They could also create a unique visual style for the game as well. Something that combines a cell shaded / traditional animation technique in the third dimension, and retains the Capcom sensibilities of Street Fighter.
I'd cream my jeans for a 3D version of Street Fighter that looked like those bomb ass watercolor character design sketches from Street Fighter 3.
It could be huge.
They just need to reach for the brass ring.
Or it could fail miserably due to crap design and execution.
